There is continued interest in the development of environmentally-friendly polymeric materials derived from renewable resources. For one, there is a concern about the cost of and the depletion of petroleum resources. Perhaps more importantly, plastic waste from consumers and industry has become a major problem. Petroleum-derived plastics are filling up our landfills and collecting in our oceans and other water bodies. All sorts of wildlife are known to consume plastic particles and become entangled in plastic materials, causing injury to their health and even death. Furthermore, plastics and their constituent chemicals can be ingested by humans as the plastics make their way through the food chain.
Unfortunately, there have been challenges in developing environmentally-friendly polymers having properties suitable for replacing petroleum-derived plastics. One challenge is the lack of synthetic strategies to convert renewable resources to monomers that can be polymerized. A second challenge is the need for polymerization techniques that do not affect un saturated double bonds and other functional groups during polymerization. The teachings of the present disclosure seek to improve on the prior art by addressing these and other challenges.